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Lake Placid

Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 24 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 5 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy | Horror
Written by: David E. Kelley
Directed by: Steve Miner
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 16, 1999
DVD: January 11, 2000
Running Time: 82 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for violent creature attacks and related gore, and for language
Starring Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Oliver Platt, Brendan Gleeson, Betty White, David Lewis, Tim Dixon, and Mariska Hargitay
Its placid waters complement the pristine Maine wilderness it borders. This tranquil setting is probably the last place you'd expect a gruesome fatality. But then it's also the last place youd expect to find a 30-foot, narrow-snouted, multi-toothed, reptilian of the species Crocodylus. An eating machine more commonly known as a crocodile. (20th Century Fox)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
As irritating as Lake Placid sometimes is, it also has an easygoing sense of fun, along with one of the more memorable movie monsters of recent years. The mismatched ingredients blend into a blissfully, stupidly surreal summer cocktail.
Read Full Review >Empire Andrew Collins
A straightforward camping-holiday nightmare, or a sly, ironic take on the same. It works deliciously as both.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Ron Wells
While we do get a bit of gore, the movie is really about this wacky bunch of people jumping on each other's nerves, kind of a zany hero's journey.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
A formulaic thriller, treated in a style that's just shy of outright parody.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
Comes in well under the ninety-minute mark, leaving no room for bombast or overkill.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The strange thing is that for all of Fonda's whining, Pullman's wary squinting and muttering, the bad dialogue, the cheesy effects, the severed toes, the severed heads, the severed bodies and the cliched directorial choices, Lake Placid adds up to a halfway enjoyable time at the movies.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris
It also goes out of its way to give you a schlocky B-movie vibe by wrangling bait in the form of a bunch of Big-Gulp stupid stock characters - that's a whopping 44 oz. more stupid than you probably were bargaining for.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Its a comedy, a romantic star vehicle, a thriller, a horror movie and a quasi-environmental parable that's calculated to appeal to all demographic groups. It's not enough of any one of these things to be particularly engaging.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Smoothly enjoyable, undemanding entertainment and features a couple of knock-out giant croc attacks.
Read Full Review >USA Today Andy Seiler
Amusingly macabre. [16 July 1999]
The New York Times Elvis Mitchell
Trouble is, while not trading quips, the characters actually go through the motions of being scared of the croc, menaced by the croc and so on. And since even the gator horror satire is old hat (remember ''Alligator?''), there's no remaining way to make this interesting.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Andy Klein
The only genuine surprises on hand are the few moments when the film defies the expectations that have been programmed into our collective neurons by the past 25 years of horror movies.
Read Full Review >Variety Robert Koehler
To be sure, Kelley's Emmy-winning brand of off-kilter humor and cockeyed affection for rural folk is on display, but his attempt here to blend the citified angst of "Ally McBeal" (co-star Bridget Fonda was Kelley's first choice as that series' lead) with the countrified absurdisms of "Picket Fences," plus bits out of the Peter Benchley playbook, doesn't hold water.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
It's like a summer stock "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," with the proviso that occasionally a giant snaggle-tooth monster slobbers onstage and eats George or Martha.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
It's laughably stupid, only fitfully scary and relatively harmless summer fun if you're 12 years old, in which case you probably aren't supposed to be going to movies like this anyway.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
A bunch of IQ-challenged characters traipsing through a laughably bad scenario brought to life using silly dialogue, banal direction, and questionable special effects.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The movie is pretty bad, all right. But it has a certain charm. It's so completely wrong-headed from beginning to end that it develops a doomed fascination.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
An almost mystifyingly bad movie.
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Instead of rooting for Pullman and Fonda, we end up praying that the crocodile is hungry enough to put them out of their misery.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Stephen Thompson
It doesn't help that, at 80 or so minutes, it feels like there's a reel missingyou know, the one with the finale that's even slightly more pulse-pounding than any of the four or five other scenes in which the big, impressive-looking monster attacks the heroes as their legs dangle in the water.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
A smallish cast peppered with a pair of bullish performances by both Platt and the lesser-known Gleeson. The two spark some chemistry between them, which is more than can be said for Pullman and Fonda's moribund performances.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector
The shticky dialogue undercuts the solid genre plotting, which undercuts the humor.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
By the end of this mercifully short excuse for a horror movie, you'll be wishing the beast had chowed down on the entire ensemble.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.4 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Miguel B. gave it an8:
More fun than horror, with lots of hilarious banter between main characters. Should not be taken seriously, of course, but definitely more enjoyable than most movies in this genre.
Gabor A. gave it a6:
Even stupider than most creature features, but also way funnier at the same time. Sheer hilarious at times.
Wesley E. gave it a7:
It's by no means a good movie... but the actors (if you can call them that) do poke some slight fun ath the subject, and the Big Croc itself kicks ass.
Pat C. gave it a 6:
The stock components of this movie are substandard in every way, but they are assembled into a terse skit that, in not having time to take itself seriously, is creative and quite entertaining. The central romantic interplay between Fonda & Pullman is d.o.a., but their awkward moments can be forgotten while cherishing the zingers that emerge without warning from the supporting cast. Betty White of Mary Tyler Moore fame, in her most saucy role to date, oddly enough seems finally in-character after decades languishing in TV sitcoms. She finds empowerment over any residual empty-nest regret by adopting creatures positioned squarely atop the local food chain. Brendan Gleeson as a steady but unsophisticatedly dry sheriff is definitely not your stereotype law enforcement officer, and pretty much single-handedly confirms the underlying comedy when the show teeters within an initially inept structure. He goes on to play off Oliver Platts character, an insensitive flake clueless about precisely everything Gleeson values. The films most gratifying tack is its borrowing of improbabilities from better films and exposing them as the totally ridiculous devices they are.
